


Spinning

by TheAwkwardPinCushion



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, HOOOOOO BOY, Hurt, Spoilers, and oh man, because lord i loved her character, i had to rewatch it to get the dialogue right, i love dungeons and dragons, mentions of lady briarwood, oh boy oh man, spoilers for ep 44, there is no comfort, this hurt to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:32:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7353598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAwkwardPinCushion/pseuds/TheAwkwardPinCushion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world started violently spinning again, and Percival was desperately trying to hang on.</p><p> </p><p>Or, the events of Episode 44 from the mind of a terrified Percival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spinning

**Author's Note:**

> !!! Warnings for repeated emetophobia triggers and death !!!

There was a moment of silence. Vex was falling, falling, falling onto the floor and Percy watched. He was stunned for a moment, replaying the events of the previous moments in his mind to try and make sense of them. The world paused. It was no longer spinning on its axis around the sun, it was no longer moving. It was stopped. It was quiet. There was no sound but the echo of Vex’s body making the smallest  _ thump _ on the floor. She looked so small, so broken.

Then the world started violently spinning again, and Percival was desperately trying to hang on. The air around him seemed so cold. He was surprised he couldn’t see his breath. Then, he realized, he  _ could. _ He just hadn’t been breathing. Fog left his agape mouth as he puffed shallow breaths, hardly feeling the effect of the oxygen in his lungs. His head spun, he felt like he was going to be flung off this planet and into the abyss of space.

He felt he deserved to be on the ground, not this woman previously so full of life and fire and  _ fight. _ She was not fighting. Her skin was going pale, her chest not rising and falling with breaths. The air around her was stagnant, even the dust hardly moving. It should have been moving.  _ She should have been moving. _

The room exploded into action. Percy broke into a sprint. Zahra slid on her knees to give her fallen friend (the word  _ ‘friend’ _ tickled the back of Percy’s mind; they certainly had acted as more) a healing potion.

“Kash, do  _ something, _ ” the tiefling begged. She looked desperate, her usual collected demeanor cast aside in this time of panic. 

The cleric was frozen, still not feeling the vicious spinning of the world.

“ _ KASHAW! _ ” Keyleth yelled. 

“Kash,  _ Kash, KASH! _ ” Zahra yelled. It shook him; the whirling of the world catching up to him once more.

He dropped to his knees as Vax’ildan was cradling his fallen sister in his arms, shaking and rocking her body back and forth. The world had wronged them so much, so many times. This was not the end of them, surely. It  _ couldn’t _ be. “What happened? I was gone for twenty seconds!” the rogue demanded. He looked nearly feral. Losing his other half in this world clearly tore him to shreds.

Vax took out one of his most potent, if not the  _ most  _ potent, healing potion and gingerly, desperately poured it down the throat of his sister’s body. His hands shook so badly he might as well had been roiling the tomb down around him. When nothing happened, the rogue let a desperate string of curses leave his mouth. He was so, so terrified. 

Kashaw began the ritual, his hands shaking as he placed a cluster of diamonds atop her chest. The words to his goddess dripped with such a dire need the very finest of hairs stood on Percy’s arms. Kashaw’s eyes went wide for a moment and he scanned the faces of those with him. Percy would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking. He was clearly torn - eyes darting between them all. Time was running out. The stone of the crypt was seeping the warmth from them all, Vex’ahlia especially. 

“What are you hesitating for?” Vax begged, his angry words giving way to the tears his eyes, “Do it! Do it; whatever the  _ fuck _ you’re going to do,  _ DO IT _ !”

“We could destroy  _ everything, _ ” the cleric countered. His voice wasn’t as insistent as one’s should be in such a dire circumstance. He was begging someone to force him into it. Percy was familiar with that feeling. It wretched a half-hearted heave from Percy’s stomach, and he barely swallowed down the terror and sickness that bubbled from his throat.

“What do you mean she could destroy -- what do you mean?” Keyleth panicked. She was shaking almost as much as Vax was. 

“Who’s  _ she _ ?” Scanlan interrupted, but Kashaw was already talking.

“The dragons are going to be the least of your problems if she comes back.  _ That’s  _ what I mean.” 

“Kashaw, you’re running out of time,” the druid begged.

“Who is she?” Scanlan asked again, his voice more demanding than before. It trembled with a fear Percy had only heard a few times.

Kashaw seemed a mix of defeated and determined, and began again. His words were clear and with a purpose now; his voice before seemed like a mumble compared to  _ this.  _ It wasn’t Celestial, Percy knew that, but it was beautiful in the way it made you think about  _ everything.  _ The way it echoed through the room made it sound as if another voice was accompanying him. It was chilling.

The body (not  _ the body,  _ it was Vex, for Pelor’s sake) rose in the air, waiting for offerings. The goddess Kashaw begged to was asking for a reason to restore the life of someone so small.

Percy offered the glass from Whitestone. She was more a home than that castle, and the residuum could be replaced if need be. She couldn’t. Oh, gods, she couldn’t be replaced. His shoulders shook as he inhaled a shallow breath.

The shards shattered. What he did was for naught. Whispers of failure, of vile intent and of cold, dead love tickled the back of his mind; Orthax was gone, but the thoughts he’d lived with for years were not. His hands shook like they did when he was fleeing Whitestone. A feeling of regret and unremitting dread and fear made him want to heave the breakfast he’d taken time to eat onto the wretched stone. He resisted the urge, barely.

Zahra removed the stone from her staff, and set it next to **_Vex’s_** body _._ The beauty of it made him want to tell the ranger all about the jewel, tell her it dulled in comparison to her. That made his stomach churn and bile raise in his throat. He couldn’t tell her anything if she was dead. Dead. 

Dead.

Zahra began to speak. The shadow of Kashaw’s goddess mingled with the words a moment, and the glow of the stone turned it from black as night to a dark gray, like clouds before a storm. How morbid. 

It began to neutralize the black, the gray now seeping into the levitating body. Kash looked up, and Percy followed his gaze. A ghastly and slightly opaque form was standing there, and Percy saw the cleric nearly quake with fear.

Scanlan began to offer something, but Vax glared him down. 

Vax’ildan pulled his sister to him, a delicacy to his hands that Percy had never seen. “Take me instead, you raving bitch,” he growled. There was an animalistic anger raining from his voice. Percy watched as a few of their companions shivered from the intensity.

The room was silent. The people in the room hardly  _ breathed.  _ Vax continued to glare at the opaque woman, unrelenting in his burning fury.

(Kash looked closer, and the fear subsided slightly.)

Seconds seemed like years. The woman in the room slowly nodded to the shaking form of Vax’ildan and vanished.

Once again, Percy’s breakfast threatened to spill onto the ground. He pushed it down when he saw that Vax did not drop dead immediately.

A breath. The sound of a beautiful,  _ living _ breath filled the room. Vex laid there wide-eyed a moment, and began to cough as her stagnant, unmoving lungs began to function once more. She looked at her brother, the remaining rage and fear still staining his cheeks in the form of freely-flowing tears.

“What happened?”

Her voice was rough, but there. She was alive, she was alive,  _ she was alive. _ Percy felt wetness running down his own face as he was rooted to the ground. He couldn’t move. He didn’t want to intrude on a moment so fleeting. He felt unworthy to even be near her, now. He had done so much damage.

She looked around, locking eyes with him. He felt his heart sink to the pit of his stomach. She was alive, she was there, and gods, she was so, so beautiful. He felt the need to bow and worship her like a goddess. But he was unworthy of her gaze, unworthy of her time. He had killed her, and in turn it was killing him. 

“Hello, darling,” Zahra said, breaking the fast of sound to their ears. She rubbed her back, Vex still being held by Vax.

“I’m so  _ cold _ ,” she said absently, and it made Percy cringe. He saw her shiver. 

“You were knocked out,” Vax said sullenly. He released his sister and let her sit on her own, holding a hand behind her in case she were too weak. 

“Knocked out?” she asked, blinking. She looked confused for just a fleeting second.

“Yeah.”  
She laughed nervously. “Well, that was a close one!” She smiled, offering that gift to everyone around her. Percy shied away from it. _He was unworthy._ “Did we find anything?”

Keyleth reached out to Vax. Zahra put her stone back where it belonged atop her staff.

Vex’ahlia began to ask Vax what was wrong, why he was crying, but he denied it and moved his face away from her.

“You people suck,” Kashaw said aloud, his dry humor swallowed by the stone walls. 

Scanlan walked up to the recently alive ranger and handed her thirty gold. He apologized, quietly, in a way that he hadn’t apologized to any of the rest of them before, a simple thing that made her eyebrow arch. She looked confused and concerned. 

“What happened?” Vex’ahlia asked again. She was beginning to panic, her eyes darting between them quickly.

“You fuckin’  _ died, _ ” Grog answered simply, still stunned in the same place he’d been in when this started.

The nervous smile etched into Vex’s face dropped, as did Percy’s heart into his stomach once more. She would have known sooner or later, and she had every right to hate him fiercely for it, but he was hoping it wouldn’t begin so  _ soon _ . 

“What…?” she asked, her voice terribly small and shaken.

“Yeah! We turned around, I’m pullin’ your brother outta that pit, and you’re layin’ there, lifeless on the floor.”

“What?” Vex asked again, once again looking at them all. She shook, her voice and her body. 

Before anyone could say anything, Trinket charged to her and licked her over, and over, and over. If a bear could cry, he would be in this moment. He was pushing his face onto the ranger and making sure she was real, she was okay, she was alive. He made sounds so desperate and worried it made Percy’s heart ache.

Vex began to panic again, “How did I-”

“How do you...how do you feel?” Grog asked, voice was laden with concern. She must have seemed so tiny and breakable to him in that moment.

“I feel...cold?” she offered, and at those words Zahra draped her in her cape, “How am I not... _ dead _ , then, if I...died?”

“That’s a good question, Vax, how are  _ you _ feeling?” the barbarian asked, now addressing the male twin.

“Vax…?” she breathed, looking at her brother.

He just left the chamber.

“Wait,” Vex said, her voice having gained some volume to it, “Percy, did you set off a trap?”

He almost lost his breakfast again. The dread creeped into his bones, into his stomach. It hurt to think of what he’d done. Everything hurt. He felt that pull, that pull to pray and to worship and to thank whatever deity blessed him with an alive and well companion. He also felt the pull of his regret as he looked her in the face.

“Is that how I died?”

“Yes.” The word felt terrible in his mouth. He felt terrible.

“Oh.” It didn’t seem to register. She began to laugh nervously, seeming desperate to fill the aching silence of the tomb. “Well, who brought me back?” her voice was too light for such a heavy question. Immediately, Percy felt that pull of self-disgust that made him want to hurt. He, still, felt so unworthy of the gaze of this beautiful thing, this wonderful woman that knew his whole name and knew his hurt and his struggles, that had helped him so much. He felt unworthy. He felt he should apologize to her for having blemished her memory with him, such a disgusting cicatrix on her life.

“Kash,” Scanlan said simply.

“And your brother,” Percy said, not quite giving her contact but watching the wall behind her.

“Oh.”

“And Zahra,” Grog reminded.

“Oh…” she put a hand on the tiefling’s arm. Her eyes glanced at the movement of Keyleth and Kashaw having a conversation too quiet for any of them to hear.

“Oi, Vex, do you want any...ale? Or anything?” Grog asked, clearly trying to be considerate in the best way he knew how.

“Yeah, yeah yeah, give me some of that. It’ll warm me up.”

The world continued to turn, violently taking them all with it. Percy watched as the walls contorted around him and the room spun. He felt sick, he felt weak.

Words echoed in his mind that made him begin moving to a corner to finally let the contents of his stomach free,  _ I broke the world for us _ .

Would he have broken the world for them? Would he have wanted Kashaw’s goddess to tear their reality to shreds, just to spend it with her?

He knew the answer. He knew it so wholly and terrifyingly in his mind, loud and clear.

Of course he would have.

**Author's Note:**

> Ow. Okay, I saw a tumblr post which I will be linking on my Critical Role blog ( str0ngjaw.tumblr.com ) when I post this. I wrote every character of this in like two hours, so be kind. Also, I can never think of good titles for my work.


End file.
